THE WALK HOME after a doctor's appointm
takes Mehmet Karabulut over a toppled minaret
izlik. When the shaking started, he was in a cafe
friends. Bricks and ceiling beams buried him, bre
four ribs and hobbling a leg. "The grocery store
in ruins too," he says. "I'm thinking of raising co
The next morning we visited Istanbul
Technical University to speak with geologists
struggling to understand exactly what had
happened along the North Anatolian Fault.
"We knew that the Golcik area was where
the fault was likely to break next," said Rob
Reilinger, an American geophysicist from
MIT. Reilinger uses the satellite-based global
ent
positioning system (GPS) to track
in Cev-
deformations or swellings of the
with
Earth's surface that indicate where
taking
pressure is building underneath.
Iran is
"We just didn't know when this
ws."
earthquake would happen or how
much of the fault would break."
Scientists are able to explain some earth
quake phenomena that puzzled the people of
Golciik. The flash of light that Ismet Koyun saw
over the Sea of Marmara may have been meth
ane gas exploding as it was released from sed
iments in the gulf. The dead crabs and jellyfish
seen at Golcik could have been killed by radon
gas seeping from rock in the Earth's crust into
WRATH OF THE GODS